Late Harvest: A How-to on Dealing with Leftovers and Stubborn Husbands
by TealPiccata
Summary: Robin tries to remove the meat from a leftover turkey. He has no idea what to do, but luckily Sumia wants to show him how it's done.


It was practically a Shepherd tradition to hold a feast in late November, long after the harvests have finished, the festivities having had time to die down, and the winds taking on a nastier bite. While it was intended to be a mostly private affair saved for the individual members still in or around Ylisstol at the time, it would always be that no matter the ongoings outside of Ylisse, most everyone would eventually come together in the barracks, even on short notice.

It was the norm for everyone to prepare a dish of their own making or something to drink to share. While there were the usual culprits, such as Lon'qu's vat of cabbage stew, the Khans' generous "donation" of ales, meads, and other alcohols, and Donnel's mother's recipes, what stood out this year was Henry's black pudding. His claim of them being handmade initially put off a majority of the Shepherds, especially after witnessing an entire war's worth of his habits, but Virion's critique of them being an echelon above blood sausages he's had at home and Stahl plopping at least one on each plate among the many he prepared for himself slowly eased everyone but the most squeamish into finally sampling the dark mage's handiwork.

As with any feast, there was bound to be leftovers, and with repeated traditions came strategies. Days before the actual feast, there were whispers that Gaius had arranged for him to receive any leftovers of Lissa's honey cakes, although details of his side of the deal were unknown. Morgan had reportedly bribed Frederick to directly give her and Cynthia any remaining bear meat, which the picky eater had apparently agreed to. Not that it mattered to Robin—this year he had personally been lumped with the near-intact roasted turkey, its cold, massive carcass now on the cutting board in early morning light, visually taunting him to actually do something about it. Laying down both a chef's knife and a paring knife by the bird, he mentally prepared himself for trying to get as much meat off of the bones.

"Alright, let's do this," he whispered to himself as he picked up the chef's knife, pushing the edge into the breast. His mouth shaped itself into a smirk until his knife hit the large breast bone, causing his eyes to widen and his smirk to falter.

"Do you need help with that?" a voice called out to the tactician from behind. He turned his head to see Sumia, still donning her nightgown and leaning against the threshold into the kitchen, a hand brought to her mouth in an attempt to hide an amused smile. "You look like Morgan after falling into her own pitfall."

"No, I can do this," he answered, letting his eyes flick back to the turkey before meeting her eyes again, he set the knife down on the cutting board and turned towards her. "It's a big dumb bird and I just need to get the meat off."

"You don't have to do it, you know."

"I figured I could at least do this for you."

Leaning her head to glance past her husband, she shook her head at the sight. "You have too many knives for that."

"Is the chef's knife overkill? I figured it would be good for the joints."

"No, that's not it. You could just—"

"The paring knife, then? There might be some meat I'll have to cut out of small places."

"No, I—you know what, I'll show you," she returned, finally making her way into the kitchen, reaching the counter without having stumbled, much to her husband's relief. "You don't need a knife for this at all." Firmly grasping the leg and the body, she proceeded to yank the entire limb from the hip, letting the meat tear and causing Robin's eyes to widen. "Just let your fingers do the work, and don't be afraid to use your nails to scrape any bits stuck to the bones."

The tactician watched in awe as Sumia tore apart the bird, seemingly with a plan in her head, yanking out the fibula from leg and firmly sliding the rest of the meat from around the tibia, pulling apart the femur from the patella, and—

"Do you eat the cartilage, dear?" she said, snapping him out of his daze.

"Um, no. I don't." She promptly tossed the milky-white bit with the leg bones, with the thigh bone joining it. With one leg down followed by another, then the wings, Robin watched her deal with the turkey's breast—his starting point—by simply clawing into them, shredding the meat by hand and tossing any loosened rib bones into the growing pile of disassembled carcass. Once most of the breast meat had joined the now-huge pile of cooked muscle and skin, she proceed to snap the body at the base of the spine, splitting it into the separate rib cage and pelvis.

"You'd miss this if you were using a knife." Dragging her thumbnails along the spine, she dug out strips of meat before moving onto the pelvis. In less than half an hour, the entire bird had been stripped of its flesh, its skeleton in a broken heap. "I might have to cook stock soon," she mused to herself, walking away to wash the turkey's fat from her hands.

"I kinda wished I knew how to do this," Robin mumbled, snapping Sumia out of her groove. "I can barely cook fig cakes, so I thought I could at least do you a favor by deboning it myself."

Drying her hands in a towel, she walked over to her husband and took his hands into hers. "I appreciate it, but it was clear to me you didn't have any idea what to do. The least I could do is show you so that you have an idea of how to do it in the future."

"Thank you," he said, letting a soft laugh bubble out of him. "I still have to do something for you, though."

"Well," she drawled, looking to the side. "You can make my birthday nice as you usually do. Just no turkey, please."

 **Author's Note: I was gonna up the food porn, but I realized I had dedicated an entire paragraph to a charcuterie board and so I had to tone it down by a significant margin. The blood sausage bit had to stay, though.**

 **Thanksgiving 2018 in the US took place on November 22nd, and Sumia's birthday is on the 24th. This was also originally gonna be a birthday fic, but it ended up being more or less a throwaway line towards the end.**

 **Thank you for taking the time to read this. Until next time!**

 **(This was cross-posted on AO3)**


End file.
